Joe Turner's Come and Gone

Bertha Holly, Seth’s wife, is a warm and sensitive woman in her late forties. Almost always seen on stage preparing meals, Bertha is the nurturer of the boarding house. She softens Seth’s gruffness, regularly intervening in defense of the boarders he is always threatening to evict. Bertha reminds him that the police frequently detain young men, saying, “leave the boy alone, Seth. You know the police do that,” and tells Seth that Zonia can help her in exchange for reduced board to resolve his financial dispute with Loomis (18). After Jeremy leaves with Molly, she consoles Mattie with assurances that she too will find a man just like Bertha found in Seth. Although, Bertha has clearly experienced her share of difficulties, “life ain’t no happy-go-lucky time where everything be just like you want to it” (71).She observes wisely thatthe most important things in life are love and laughter.  

Bynum, a “conjure man or root worker” in his early sixties, is the only character in the play old enough to have been born into slavery (10). He is the character most connected to his African heritage with his rituals, special powers and mystical visions. The longest-term boarder, Seth observes that, “He’s one of them fellows never could stay in one place. He was wandering around the country till he got old and settled here” (36). Bynum discovered his identity in a quasi-hallucinatory vision in which the “shiny man” led him to his father, who showed him how to find his song, “the Binding song,” that brings people together (16). Bynum is searching to find the shiny man one more time, to affirm his identity and know his “song had been accepted and worked its full power in the world” (15). Both Martha Loomis and Mattie first come to the boarding house looking for Bynum, based on his reputation as someone who can fix things and bring people together. Bynum also offers sage guidance to the younger boarders, counseling Jeremy on how to treat a woman, advising Mattie to let go of her emotional attachment to the man who left her, and encouraging Loomis along his path of self-discovery. At the end of the play, when Loomis covers himself with blood, Bynum sees in him his “shiny man”, and knows he has “left his mark on life” (15).

Rutherford Selig, in his early fifties and the only white character in the play, is a peddler who visits Seth weekly. The descendant of a slave trader and a runaway slave hunter, Selig symbolizes the white exploitation of African-Americans. Selig continues this legacy, although in a less severe, and as he notes, less profitable form. As both the supplier of the sheet metal and the purchaser of the finished products, Selig has a vertical monopoly over Seth’s pot making, thus controlling the profit margin. Selig, also known as “the people finder,” charges a fee for this service, which Bertha shrewdly identifies as a scam: “Now that’s the truth of Rutherford Selig. This old People Finding business is for the birds. He ain’t never found nobody he ain’t took away”(41). Loomis pays Selig a dollar to find Martha.

Jeremy Furlow, a smiling and optimistic twenty-five-year-old recently arrived from the south, wants to “go everywhere and do everything there is to be got out of life” (63). Seth regards Jeremy as a naïve, “country” boy who is going to have a “rude awakening” as he discovers the realities facing African-Americans in the North. Jeremy loses his job for refusing to pay a fee to a white man. He ignores Seth’s advice to focus on the practical aspect of earning money and is outraged at the injustice he suffers. Jeremy has music in the form of his guitar, but his “spirit has yet to be molded into song” (18). Both Bynum and Seth observe that Jeremy has a lot to learn. When he is persuading Molly to leave with him, Jeremy repeats some of Bynum’s instructions on how to treat a woman, showing that he is making progress towards a more defined self. 

Mattie Campbell is a twenty-six-year-old woman whose unhappiness has taken a toll on her appearance. She comes to the boarding house looking for Bynum, asking him to bring back the man who left her after their two babies died. Her heart and spirit broken: “I ain’t never found no place for me to fit in. Seem like all I do is start over” (25). Nonetheless, Mattie still has faith in the redeeming power of love. Mattie is seeking a relationship that will last, acknowledging that she “can’t just go through life piecing myself out to different mens,” but repeats the pattern by moving in with Jeremy, who is clearly not ready to settle down (29). Jeremy then leaves her almost immediately for Molly. After she gives Zonia a hair ribbon, Loomis compliments her. She runs after him at the end, having found her man at last.

Herald Loomis, a thirty-two-year-old man, arrives at the boarding house with his young daughter, Zonia, and searching for his wife, Martha. Loomis’s search for Martha is the central narrative arc of the play. Agitated and “at times possessed,” Loomis immediately draws Seth’s suspicious scrutiny (18). Later, Loomis flies into a rage while the other residents are singing and dancing in a Juba, culminating in a disturbing vision of bones coming out of the water and washing ashore as African-American bodies, a wrenching image of the slave experience. This disturbance provokes Seth to evict him, although he relents, and permits Loomis’s to remain for the rest of the week that he has paid for.

Loomis’s violent reaction to the blues song of the title, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” prompts Bynum to ask about his background, eventually concluding, “That’s why I can tell you one of Joe Turner’s…‘Cause you forgot how to sing your song” (6). As a result of his kidnapping and seven years of enslavement at the hands of the Joe Turner, Loomis is a broken man, lost in the world. Loomis becomes emblematic of the slave experience; an innocent life stolen, taken from home, separated from family, exploited for physical labor, his spirit and sense of self crushed.

Ever since he was released, Loomis has been looking for Martha to “Find my starting place in the world” (72). Martha arrives, looking for Zonia, and tells Loomis that after five years of waiting, she decided to consider him dead in order to go on with her life. After Martha thanks Bynum for bringing Zonia to her, Loomis blames Bynum for binding him to the road. Bynum assures Loomis that he only bound Zonia to her mother, and that he only can free himself by singing his song. When Martha quotes from the Psalms, Loomis ragingly mocks her expressions of Christianity, perhaps reacting to the fact that Martha followed the Church instead of waiting for him. After she talks about the blood of Jesus, Loomis cuts himself and smears the blood on his face. He has an epiphany, realizing that he is standing, and leaves, with Mattie following him. Bynum recognizes him as the shiny man, “the One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way” that he has been seeking (15).

Zonia Loomis is Herald and Martha Loomis’s eleven-year-old daughter and bears a striking resemblance to her mother. Zonia has spent the last four years on the road with her father. When Martha arrives at the boarding house she is looking for Zonia, and Loomis gives her to her mother. Devastated, she begs to stay with Loomis, “searching and never finding”, but Loomis insists she go with her Martha (83). Zonia represents another generation damaged by the effect of slavery on families.

Reuben Mercer is about Zonia’s age and lives next door to Seth and Bertha Holly. Reuben’s friend Eugene died and requested that Reuben set his pigeons free. Instead, Reuben sells the pigeons to Bynum for his rituals. Like Bynum and Loomis, Reuben experiences a vision with a message; he sees Seth’s mother telling him to honor Eugene’s wishes. Sad to see Zonia leave, Reuben promises, “When I get grown, I come looking for you”, taking the cycle of separation and seeking into a new generation (77).

Molly Cunningham, twenty-six and strikingly attractive, chooses to “just take life as it come” (59). Arriving at the boarding house after missing her train to Cincinnati, Molly is friendly and curious, asking Bynum, Seth and Mattie about themselves and revealing parts of her story in the process. Molly doesn’t trust men as a result of being left by one she loved. She tells Mattie that her mother taught her how to avoid having babies. Although Molly runs off with Jeremy, who was involved with Mattie, Mattie had told her they “just be keeping company,” a relationship assessment that Jeremy repeats. How she gets by in the world is unclear. She leaves with Jeremy on three conditions, “Molly don’t work. And Molly ain’t up for sale,” and “Molly ain’t going South” (63).